kerosan41 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:That's really weird. Are they all Japanese-dubbed films that you're buying that don't have exact subs? I can't imagine the proportion of non-exact subtitles is very high compared to exact subs. At any rate, there's so many Japanese subtitles online... it's just hard for me to imagine the bazillion of exact Japanese vobsubs ripped from DVDs (the ones I posted here are just a portion of what's out there) is actually representative of the smallest portion of subs, and that most of them are non-exact.

Most of them are Japanese dubs because original Japanese productions tend to be cost prohibitive. I've never bought or rented a dubbed film with exact subs and I've only purchased one Japanese original that had exact subs. It was the collectors edition, which made it cost 8k yen. The portion of non exact subs vastly outnumbers the amount of films with exact.

I'm not convinced. It seems more likely that anime/dubs contain few subs or non-exact subs, according to what you and Magamo have said, and in my experience, most Japanese films with Japanese subtitles feature exact subtitles. My point being, there's plenty of exact Japanese subtitles out there, particularly in vobsub format. ;p

I do think it's likely that only in the latter half of the decade have Japanese films been regularly distributed on DVD with Japanese subtitles. That's when I noticed the surge in the subtitle rips' numbers online.

Mind you, this is true of other languages also. For some reason a lot of shows get dubbed into other languages and then the production company seems to get some completely different department to do the subtitling, rather than transcribing. You end up with sometimes quite divergent dialogue. I'm looking at you France... -_- You would think it would cheaper just to transcribe the dubbed dialogue, like closed captions, but I suppose subtitles have a different effect when you're watching a movie and reading rather than just listening.

In general I've found Japanese subtitles to be pretty good for series with the original audio being in Japanese. I haven't watched any non-Japanese shows dubbed into Japanese but I imagine there would be the same inexact subtitling problem as with other languages (I'm looking at you again, France -_-).

Nemotoad Wrote:Mind you, this is true of other languages also. For some reason a lot of shows get dubbed into other languages and then the production company seems to get some completely different department to do the subtitling, rather than transcribing. You end up with sometimes quite divergent dialogue.

This is a feature :-) Certainly English subbed and dubbed anime are aiming at audiences with different preferences about where in the 'fidelity of translation <-> natural speech' continuum the translation should be aiming...

The sad thing about the lack of subs on DVD for drama, anime, and movies is that exact subs for all of these things do actually exist. If you watch broadcast TV in japan with subtitles enabled, everything (almost) has exact subtitles. Why can't the people making the DVD just do a tiny bit of extra work and put these subs (that already exist) on the DVD? It can't be space, it's only a few kilobytes. It's not a matter of timing, the subs are simulcast on TV stations as soon as shows premier, and the DVDs come out months later.

Does anyone know why this is? Laziness? How much effort does it take?

Well, I'm not 100%, but I think some of those subs are made literally on the spot, and not necessarily saved. This is from the Japanese Typing, something or other post.

Even if the subs are saved for future broadcasting, they probably don't send them to the companies which produce the DVDs.

Of course, I don't know, and this is all just conjecture.

pm215 Wrote:This is a feature :-) Certainly English subbed and dubbed anime are aiming at audiences with different preferences about where in the 'fidelity of translation <-> natural speech' continuum the translation should be aiming...

Speaking of which, I noticed in some anime, such as Studio Ghibli films, the English dubs often contain far more dialogue and exposition than the Japanese audio. I've always found this crazy - it makes the pacing a little clunky sometimes when you compare the two and changes the mood of the scene slightly. Do people who listen to the English dubs really need all that extra exposition compared to English subs?

Nemotoad Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:This is a feature :-) Certainly English subbed and dubbed anime are aiming at audiences with different preferences about where in the 'fidelity of translation <-> natural speech' continuum the translation should be aiming...

Speaking of which, I noticed in some anime, such as Studio Ghibli films, the English dubs often contain far more dialogue and exposition than the Japanese audio. I've always found this crazy - it makes the pacing a little clunky sometimes when you compare the two and changes the mood of the scene slightly. Do people who listen to the English dubs really need all that extra exposition compared to English subs?

But it'd be strange if characters move their mouths and use body language when there's no dialogue.

Joking aside, I guess it's due to the difference in how the two languages carry information. I assume most major languages carry approximately the same amount of information in a natural dialogue of the same length. But as you probably already know, Japanese don't use as many words as English to express the same thing. So if you did literal word-for-word translation from Japanese, the resulting English subs would be shorter than natural sounding dialogue. Of course, the actual subs in DVDs aren't as literal as machine translation. But I wouldn't be surprised if English subs in anime are noticeably shorter than English dubs because a significant number of people who watch anime in subs prefer literal translation so companies use more literal, and hence shorter subs. Besides, subs are supposed to be the gist of what's been said, so they're shorter than dub audio regardless.

It does seem that English anime dubs often have more words than the original Japanese audio. But at the same time it seems Japanese dubs of American movies and stuff usually have fewer words than the original. Since there is no reason for a Japanese dub company to make it unnecessarily shorter on purpose, I'm guessing it has more to do with the difference in how the two languages work than with localization.

Don't quote me on this though. It's just my speculation.